Suit filed in case of "Girl dead, boy injured at Glacier National Park

[Sevenrider860]

I do feel remorseful for the poor training when I first became a PADI instructor. I do offer free "upgrade" training to my early students whom I was placing on their knees.

Just curious how many of your early students still do everything on their knees years after their PADI training?

I have had the opportunity to go on dive trips with my early students, who were taught initial skills on their knees, and they progressed into very competent divers, some are even competent technical and cave divers and instructors for other agencies. Teaching the initial skills on their knees did not seem to stunt their progression as divers in any way.

I have dived with students I have taught off their knees, neutrally buoyant, and thought to myself how the hell can a person have forgotten all of the skills they performed when trained.

I am just not in that camp that if a student had to kneel to master a specific skill in confined water, they have been ruined for life as a diver.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Just curious how many of your early students still do everything on their knees years after their PADI training?

I have had the opportunity to go on dive trips with my early students, who were taught initial skills on their knees, and they progressed into very competent divers, some are even competent technical and cave divers and instructors for other agencies. Teaching the initial skills on their knees did not seem to stunt their progression as divers in any way.

I have dived with students I have taught off their knees, neutrally buoyant, and thought to myself how the hell can a person have forgotten all of the skills they performed when trained.

I am just not in that camp that if a student had to kneel to master a specific skill in confined water, they have been ruined for life as a diver.

Most of them are not diving. They'd basically be starting over. As I improved my teaching, my retention rate improved dramatically.

 

[Sevenrider860]

Most of them are not diving. They'd basically be starting over. As I improved my teaching, my retention rate improved dramatically.

Understood. I feel a lot of my retention rate is based on competitive hobbies. I know I do have some that intended to be once a year vacation divers when the start the course, or “bucket list” divers.

 

[Seaweed Doc]

Hopefully this is not too far off the thread topic.

My recollection is that any time there's a dive fatality the instructor is immediately suspended (not expelled, mind you). I assume this suspension lasts until the instructor is cleared, rehabilitated, or expelled permanently. I further assumed (but now am questioning given what seems to be a botched investigation) in this case the instructor was never cleared or rehabilitated by PADI and was expelled about the time a settlement was reached.

Can anybody that knows for sure one way or another answer some questions?

1. Have I correctly described the general process? I seem to "know" this but can't find a citation at the moment.

2. Snow was expelled in January 2023. Was she suspended from the time of Ms. Mill's death until then? Did she issue any certifications personally after the death and prior to expulsion? (I understand that some divers involved on that day were certified, but it's not clear who signed off on the certifications. Unless I missed something?)

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Hopefully this is not too far off the thread topic.

My recollection is that any time there's a dive fatality the instructor is immediately suspended (not expelled, mind you). I assume this suspension lasts until the instructor is cleared, rehabilitated, or expelled permanently. I further assumed (but now am questioning given what seems to be a botched investigation) in this case the instructor was never cleared or rehabilitated by PADI and was expelled about the time a settlement was reached.

Can anybody that knows for sure one way or another answer some questions?

1. Have I correctly described the general process? I seem to "know" this but can't find a citation at the moment.

2. Snow was expelled in January 2023. Was she suspended from the time of Ms. Mill's death until then? Did she issue any certifications personally after the death and prior to expulsion? (I understand that some divers involved on that day were certified, but it's not clear who signed off on the certifications. Unless I missed something?)

I can't speak to that, but I suspect there'd be heavy criticism of PADI if Snow was allowed to become active again.

 

[Subfiend]

Hopefully this is not too far off the thread topic.

My recollection is that any time there's a dive fatality the instructor is immediately suspended (not expelled, mind you). I assume this suspension lasts until the instructor is cleared, rehabilitated, or expelled permanently. I further assumed (but now am questioning given what seems to be a botched investigation) in this case the instructor was never cleared or rehabilitated by PADI and was expelled about the time a settlement was reached.

Can anybody that knows for sure one way or another answer some questions?

1. Have I correctly described the general process? I seem to "know" this but can't find a citation at the moment.

2. Snow was expelled in January 2023. Was she suspended from the time of Ms. Mill's death until then? Did she issue any certifications personally after the death and prior to expulsion? (I understand that some divers involved on that day were certified, but it's not clear who signed off on the certifications. Unless I missed something?)

1. Yes.

2. PADI issued seven certifications on November 24, 2020 based on Linnea’s fatal 15-minute dive on November 1, 2020. These were not pre-processed certifications, where the paperwork was submitted before the dives. The certifications were issued two weeks after Snow submitted an incident report to PADI and PADI’s investigator visited Montana. Snow was placed in “administrative suspension” by PADI until January 2023, when she was expelled. It’s not clear why she was not expelled sooner, and we asked why this was in the litigation. The response we received was legal gibberish.

After I advised PADI’s counsel last month that our investigation showed not a single student of Snow’s conducted a single dive in a single class that would qualify as a training dive under PADI’s standards, PADI canceled all of the certifications issued by Snow in 2020. It is my understanding that PADI offered free eLearning to these divers, but they had to pay for in-water training themselves. I see that TDI/SDI has generously offered to retrain these divers, with the cost of doing so the be covered by an anonymous donor.

 

[formernuke]

I can see suspension until investigation is completed. I can't see why it tool that long for them to complete a investigation of sufficient findings to expell her.

 

[Subfiend]

One of the benefits to being a lawyer for a particular industry or type of client for more than 25 years is you have an opportunity to study the claims and defenses asserted in lawsuits involving the industry/clients, and you can study how different attorneys react to different scenarios. This makes them predictable.

During the Mills case, I was never surprised by anything the defendants or their counsel did, not even taking Linnea’s computer off her dead body and moving it out-of-state for two years. I saw some new tricks, but they all fell under the category of methods or strategies I already expected to see.

There were times when something would happen that I had expected to see and I would be mystified by this thing actually happening, because it seemed to be done out of habit and not because it was actually in the best interest of the client or the party. PADI’s failure to immediately expel Snow fits into this category. The longer PADI waited, the more I could use its inexcusable delay to club them like a baby seal at trial.

 

[sea_ledford]

2. PADI issued seven certifications on November 24, 2020 based on Linnea’s fatal 15-minute dive on November 1, 2020. These were not pre-processed certifications, where the paperwork was submitted before the dives. The certifications were issued two weeks after Snow submitted an incident report to PADI and PADI’s investigator visited Montana.

WOW! So, let me think aloud on this one... the dive shop had a fatality AND a significant hyperbaric injury on a training dive, which at the minimum meant the dives for the rest of the class were not completed (yes, completely ignoring all the other stuff). But they processed the cards anyway.

I guess this is inline with the thought process that the shop had regarding the dive plan in the first place (underage and unqualified "assistant," inexperienced instructor, remote location with no comms, no permit to be at the site in the first place, mixed certification class... that was the PLAN, not decisions made in the heat of the moment).

I was always giving the shop a pass on this one, since I figured they pre-processed them so they could hand out cards at the end of class. It keeps getting worse. If the captain of the Conception can get prison time for not maintaining a night watch and Sotis can go to prison for selling CCRs to the bad guys, these people should serve some time too.

 

[Seaweed Doc]

There were times when something would happen that I had expected to see and I would be mystified by this thing actually happening, because it seemed to be done out of habit and not because it was actually in the best interest of the client or the party. PADI’s failure to immediately expel Snow fits into this category. The longer PADI waited, the more I could use its inexcusable delay to club them like a baby seal at trial.

Very interesting. I wondered about legal strategies on this. I was comparing this to situations where I've had to fire people for cause in jobs where that's tough to do for one reason or another. T's are crossed and i's dotted on every process involved, and it takes far longer than an outside observer might think is warranted. And even when the cause is obvious and no court would consider a wrongful termination claim, lawyers may get involved. Frustratingly for me, we keep paying these people while attempting to minimize harm by stripping them of responsibilities or suspending them completely until finally firing them outright.

In this case the instructor was suspended and thus couldn't cause any more harm. You and your team were doing the hard work of making Snow look bad (and deservedly so). Ultimately PADI intended to expel her, but I guessed they were concerned that Snow might sue them for expelling her. Let all the evidence be out there, the depositions done, and then expel her. Maybe that's how PADI lawyers approached it?

Thanks for all the interaction: It's giving us all an inside look that we don't usually see. At risk of annoying you with more questions, would you be able to respond to a couple more?

1. I'm guessing that in civil trials generally, or perhaps just in this case, the judge won't sever the trial for the defendants? That is try PADI separately from Snow et al.. If not, if you were defending in a case like this would you see defendants generally maintaining a united front of sorts, at least not creating unnecessary animosity amongst themselves until the trial was settled?

2. Can you share anything more about the 7 certifications issued and withdrawn? Who was the instructor of record? (For non-instructors: At some point an individual instructor has to "sign off" on the certification; the "dive shop" can't be the instructor of record though a shop employee that's not an instructor could process the certification.) If this was Snow that was the instructor of record then PADI has a big problem: Once the incident was reported the automated systems shouldn't have allowed her to certify anybody.

At some point we're going to have start paying you law school tuition for the education you're giving us.

Your comments also point out ANOTHER likely standards violation by Snow: The incident report wasn't filed in a timely manner. The standard is that the report be filed "immediately." Again, I can't put my finger on it, but I'm pretty sure I'm recalling immediately being "the same day." A week later isn't good enough.